DCUO Revenue Increase Hits 700% Post-F2P

Playerbase continues to grow.

Jim Hargreaves, 6 years ago, 16 comments.

Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley gave us another insight as to how well superhero MMO, DC Universe Online, is faring after its transition to F2P (free-to-play.) Since the switch earlier this month, DCUO’s playerbase has seen an increase by 6% a day, Smedley having previously confirmed a couple of weeks ago that the total number has increased by 120k, and that’s just for the PC.

Sure, everyone loves free stuff, especially video games. We’ve been hearing from our community and how, despite the colossal download, they’ve been taking to the streets of Gotham of Metropolis. However big the F2P uptake, there has been the niggling worry that players would simply have a quick mess around before signing out and wiping the game from their hard drive; either that, or they would keep playing for free without touching the premium content. Luckily for SOE, this has not been case; in fact the firm is taking 700% more in revenue than before the change to F2P.

While the news of increased spend is a good one, the figures could be skewed somewhat by the influx of free players spending their $5 to get the bump up to Premium status. It’ll be interesting to see if the level is sustained, or whether it will in fact drop off…

How do the micro-transactions work in it? Is it pretty essential that you buy stuff, or can you easily get a good game without actually buying anything? I’d be interested in giving it a go, but I can’t be trusted where microtransactions are concerned!

Entire game is totally free, everything that was on the £40 disc. All the stuff on the marketplace are either stuff like costumes and toys (that don’t affect gameplay at all), or stuff like extra character or inventory slots, or the ability to withdraw cash you’ve earnt above and beyond the free game wallet limit. Once you’ve spent $5 you’re bumped up to premium level forever so get more character slots, inventory slots, cash limit etc anyway. I think they way they’ve implemented f2p is much better than other games, as none of the original content is locked away. The only content you won’t be able to play is what comes with the dlc (unless you buy it, or subscribe, of course)

a lot of the items for sale are just cosmetic, just styles rather than upgraded pieces of armour.
i don’t know if you can buy upgrades or not, i was just checking out what the stuff looked like rather than comparing stats. ^_^

you can buy extra character slot and tickets for the jokers funhouse and other in game events.

there are also toys and what look like in game pet, that are probably not usable in combat.

i’m tempted by some of the armour sets that have the same starfield effect that Donna Troy’s outfit has.
like the black areas aren’t just black but are a window into space.
the effect looks great when you see it on a character in motion.

however i don’t think ill play this (even though it is free)
i just recently bought the PC version of Skyrim and learnt quite quickly that the game runs horribly on my laptop, even on Low settings with everything off it still struggles.

so i dont have much hope that DCUO will run much better.

i could get the PS3 version but id rather have the PC version for the sake of convenience.

It’s the niggling worry that i might mess around for a bit and then wipe it from my hdd which is making me hesitate in downloading the 18GB install file. I even deleted stuff to make space for it but now i’m a bit occupied with Skyrim.

My PS3 just died and is being replaced today. This article just reminded me that I’ll have to download DCUO again. OMFG. Makes redownloading my Singstar collection seem like nothing. Absolutely worth it though, top game.

Well it’s not really rocket science make the game free of course there are going to be a lot more people playing it even people who aren’t that interested in it. They just try it because it’s free and they might like it so much they buy things in it. I think there were a lot of people who were interested in this game but didn’t get it because of the monthly fee i know i was one of those people

thesixthaxis - an oscar mike media joint

We do not license content or design to any other site.
This WordPress theme is the legal property of Oscar Mike Media.
No element of this site can be used without written permission.
All content should be considered opinion.
Article posters are the individual owner of the article content.
We are not affiliated with any third party.